Don’T Miss Guitarist Edgar Cruz In Concert

This coming Tuesday evening at 7 p.m. in the Payson High School auditorium, nationally renowned guitarist Edgar Cruz will present a two-hour Tonto Community Concert Association finger-pickin’, knee-slappin’, good-time performance.

Cruz will be fresh off two performances the day before in Globe, and a same-day matinee for Payson’s school children just hours before.

It looks like we’re in for another top TCCA concert when Cruz takes the stage.

John Schroeter, publisher of Fingerstyle Guitar Magazine, recently had this to say about Cruz, “Those who have witnessed Cruz’s performance immediately become entranced at the precision, speed and complexity of his guitar arrangements that create a symphony of sound unusual to just one instrument. He is a National Guitar Fingerpicking Champion with more than 10 solo CDs to his credit, and is featured frequently on ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS-affiliate stations.

“Edgar Cruz is a wizard. How else can one explain how he captures the sounds of an entire band and reduces them to a single guitar? It’s that special gift, skill, magic — whatever you’d like to call it — that has produced such amazing solo guitar performances”

Next Tuesday’s performance also promises to be a whole lot of fun. In addition to his mastery of the guitar, audience participation, clapping, singing, dancing, snapping, “olés and yee-haws” are all encouraged.

A big part of Cruz’s repertoire includes music from different eras and genres — a little of this and a lot of that from the big band sound of the 1930s and ’40s, instrumental hits of the 1960s and soft rock from the 1970s. Expect to hear such songs as “Classical Gas,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “In the Mood,” “Dueling Banjos” and “Hotel California.”

This week’s trivia question is: Match the following three songs, 1)“Bohemian Rhapsody,” 2)“In The Mood” and 3)“Hotel California” with their original recording artists, A) Glenn Miller, B) The Eagles, and C) Queen.

This week, if you are the seventh caller and have the right matches, you’ll win two tickets (a whopping $70 value) to next Tuesday’s Edgar Cruz concert at the high school. Good luck!

Now, let’s check out how we did with last week’s music trivia question, which was: Can you name the hard rock group that recorded the 1974 number one hit, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet?”

From 1973-79, this band scored 12 hits on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart, including the Top 20 hits “Roll On Down The Highway,” “Hey You” and one of my favorite dance hits, “Takin’ Care Of Business.”

Was the name of this hard rock group: A) Metallica, B) Bachman-Turner Overdrive, C) Guns N’ Roses or D) Rollin’ In The Dough?

The correct answer was Bachman-Turner Overdrive, or more commonly know as BTO.

Metallica was a heavy metal band out of Los Angeles in the late 1980s through the mid-2000s, whose top song was its 1991 “Enter Sandman.”

Also out of L.A., Guns N’ Roses was a hard rock group that enjoyed chart success from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s. Its top recording was its 1988 breakthrough song and number one hit, “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

Rumor has it that “Rollin’ In The Dough” is a heavy metal band recently formed at the Payson United School District office. Can anyone shed light on the validity or of this rumor?

Congratulations to this past week’s first-time music trivia winner, Robin Morris, who has called in quite a few times — always with the right answer, but never lucky enough to be the right caller number.

For his right answer, Robin won a $15 gift certificate to the Animal Welfare Thrift Shop on West Main Street, courtesy of owner Penny McKinlock. Robin said, “This is great! I live just a few blocks from the thrift shop, so I can just walk on over.”

A little about this week’s winner: Robin grew up in Arizona, has lived in Payson since the 1970s and is single. He’s now retired, enjoys reading the Bible and training his beloved German Sheppard, “Annie of Arizona.”

Robin’s favorite music is old-time piano and hymns and says his all-time favorite song is “How Great Thou Art.”